Friday 8am Silicon Valley news report:

Google's Youtube clinches deal with studios -Reuters

The move underscores Google's efforts to ramp up content on YouTube to attract more advertising dollars.
On a blog post, YouTube said only that it was announcing a new destination for TV shows and an improved page for movies, without elaborating.

IBM Doesn't Want Sun at Any Price: CNBC

It reportedly wouldn't touch Sun now having been told by the Justice Department, the SEC, and the European Commission that it would be in for a six-nine month review that would mean financial and business practice disclosures that IBM is not prepared to make, preferring to lie low and not attract attention.

Will Ulitzer Dominate News Content on The Web? - Gartner

Ulitzer content is grouped in 25 distinct subjects from "Aerospace and Defense" to "Travel and Hospitality." Each subject group offers an unlimited number of topics, and each topic may contain thousands of peer-reviewed feature stories, bylined articles, blog posts, news, reviews, commentary, and unique editorial content authored by top experts in their fields.

Would Yahoo Sell Its Other Assets in Asia? -NYTimes

Analysts said that the sale of Yahoo’s Japanese and Chinese investments would be complicated by a sharp decline in the value of Yahoo Japan and difficulty in putting a value on some of Alibaba’s online businesses, which are small but growing.

Google growth slows dramatically in 1Q -SFGate

"No company is recession-proof," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told analysts in a conference call. "Google is absolutely feeling the impact."

Modest 6% Growth in Revenue for Google -NYTimes

While Google is the largest seller of online ads, its results are not indicative of the health of the overall online ad market. Unlike other Web publishers, which depend far more heavily on display ads, Google earns the majority of its revenue from text ads that appear next to search results and on the Web sites of its publishing partners. Analysts say they believe those ads are more resistant to cuts during a recession, because marketers use them to attract people to their Web sites.

Microsoft agrees to some lengthened U.S. oversight -Reuters

The extension of U.S. court oversight was not linked to Microsoft's coming release of Windows 7, the document said. However, the government needs to "thoroughly review" all the technical documentation for Windows 7 and that will be possible only after Microsoft releases the final system documents on June 30, the court filing said.

Democracy, Facebook-style -SFGate

If these new documents are approved, Facebook said: "all future changes to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will go through the same process of notice and comment, and may be put to a vote if enough people comment. Even if these new proposed documents are defeated, we will still find ways to involve you in the governance process; however, this involvement will need to be explicitly stated in a future version of the Terms of Use."

EBay to buy S.Korea's Gmarket for up to $1.2 billion -Reuters

When combined, Gmarket and Internet Auction would have 87 percent of the country's online customer-to-customer market and more than 30 percent of the Web shopping mall market, according to the Korean antitrust agency.

Facebook Public Profile Statuses Officially Become Public

Andy Young, the developer behind Selective Twitter Status, was the first developer that we’ve seen to figure out a way to update public profile statuses via Twitter. Earlier today his application added a feature which now enables any Twitter user to update their public profile directly. This also means that applications can now effectively update public profile statuses, something that many developers were waiting for.

Performance of Java Compilers: An Empirical Study -JDJ

This article studies the Java APIs for an extra boost in performance. It's not a new idea, and is often referred to as micro-benchmarking (MBM). However, a systematic and thorough performance analysis at that level is still missing. Herein, I'll address performance as speed, measured in wall clock time. I'll cover various Java Virtual Machines (JVMs), and show that the results differ significantly

Making the Case for Desktop Virtualization -Sys-Con

This session will present a new approach to desktop virtualization where desktops and applications are fully encapsulated in a virtual workspace environment and delivered dynamically from a private or a public computing cloud, to be run locally, independent of each other directly on bare-metal PC hardware.

EBay expects 'significant' Skype stake after IPO -AP

During a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said the online marketplace operator intends an "ultimate full separation of Skype." The first stage will involve the initial public offering announced Tuesday, after which eBay initially expects to stay a "significant" Skype shareholder, he said.

Bored with training videos? Try a videogame -Reuters

"We've designed the game, which will take five hours to complete, to focus on interactions with guests and every action will impact the guest's mood as well as the hotel's Satisfaction and Loyalty (SALT) scores," said Jerry Heneghan, CEO of Virtual Heroes.

When Cloud Computing Doesn’t Make Sense -NYTimes

The McKinsey study, “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” concludes that outsourcing a typical corporate data center to a cloud service would more than double the cost. Its study uses Amazon.com’s Web service offering as the price of outsourced cloud computing, since its service is the best-known and it publishes its costs.

15M hits later, YouTube Symphony makes live debut-SFGate

With 21st-century multimedia pizazz, the Web site's first orchestra dazzled the audience in the 118-year-old concert hall in its debut concert.